In Broke, rodeo riding is a pliable metaphor for the human experience. Getting back up after a disappointment and persevering through life’s ups and downs are themes explored in major films about rodeo, like 8 Seconds starring Luke Perry, The Rider directed by Oscar-winner Chloé Zhao, and, well, that’s mostly it. Rodeo riding is not the most mainstream topic for a film, maybe because it alienates city slickers who are turned off by it. So, almost by default, writer/director Carlyle Eubank’s Broke is the most notable rodeo-centered film in years. This is due to its cast, topped by “dime store Captain America” Wyatt Russell and the always reliable Dennis Quaid.
The pair makes for a respectable cinematic father-son team, which helps us stay on the horse as Broke trots around some familiar ground (and some shaky new ground). Russell is especially appealing in what is certainly the most promising performance of his ascendant career. He’s quite affecting and looks the part of a dedicated bronco rider — eye-rollingly named True — who can’t come to terms with this career falling apart due to injury.
One of True’s professional options is to become a sketch artist, an aspect of Eubank’s script that never quite convinces. In fact, Broke, which includes multiple lines from the Dylan Thomas poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, has an odd little highbrow streak that clashes with Eubank’s depiction of rural Montana life. But True’s refusal to succumb to family pressure and abandon his fading dream is familiar enough in the broad strokes to resonate with many folks, regardless of their opinion about rodeo.
‘Broke’ Features Rocky Mountain Highs and Tragic Lows
2.5
/5
Release Date
May 6, 2025
Runtime
100 Minutes
Director
Carlyle Eubank
Writers
Carlyle Eubank
Pros & Cons
- Wyatt Russell gives his best overall performance.
- The film’s ideas about career drift and uncertain futures could resonate with many viewers.
- The survival scenes are very engaging.
- References to Dylan Thomas and The Big Lebowski don’t entirely fit.
- It’s ultimately a pretty standard family drama.
Possibly under the justifiable assumption that yet another Western about livin’ and lovin’ in the Rocky Mountain region won’t be enough, Eubank tells True’s story in flashback while charting his escape after getting lost in a blizzard. The film begins in the present, as an unconscious True Brandywine wakes up buried in snow that covers the landscape as far as DP Charlie Sarroff’s camera can see. Where True is and how he got there is a question that Eubank is waiting until the end to answer. First, he sends us back to the rodeo where Eubank, who also wrote Broke’s script, reveals the behind-the-scenes difficulties of being a bareback bronc rider. True lives to stay on his horse for the all-important eight seconds, but whether he does or not, he’ll be vomiting and popping pills soon after, as well as forgetting his ATM PIN thanks to multiple, noggin-rattling falls.
Before the conflict really kicks in, Eubank sketches quotidian life in the Brandywine family in light strokes that are hardly unique but still allow us to sink nicely into the story. Quaid (Reagan, The Substance), who is starting to grizzle himself into a fine representation of hard-scrapple American decency, plays True’s father, George. A former rodeo rider himself, George spends his days reading the newspaper and grumbling about True’s lack of post-rodeo career plans, which makes True increasingly angry. He’s just too in love with the sport to ever consider retiring, a conviction he conveys to his younger brother, Caleb (Johnny Berchtold) and their early scenes of sibling connection are the warmest and most genuine in the film.
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‘Broke’ is like ‘The Revenant’ But With Rodeo
While the curtain falls on True’s rodeo career and his new romance with Ali (Auden Thornton), who is conveniently a nurse, heats up, Eubank intermittently sends us back to the snow, where a frostbitten True tries to Revenant himself to safety. He wraps his body in padding ripped from the seats of his truck, fashions a squirrel trap for desperate frontier vittles, and worriedly tries to light his very last match for warmth. All these sub-Joseph Conrad (by way of Jack London) scenes work primarily for their novelty and the inevitable meme of a freezing, bearded Wyatt looking exactly like his freezing, bearded father, Kurt, as he appeared in John Carpenter’s The Thing.
Existentialism aside, Broke gets by on its recognizable themes and Russell’s performance, which papers over the fact that little here is particularly new and not all of it works. After a meet-cute over a busted engine, True’s courtship with Ali, while gently played, hits all the expected beats. Sadly, the levers of Eubank’s screenplay start to show as he differentiates True from his brother, Caleb. Too timid for rural life, Caleb plays computer games, loves zombie books, and declares himself so wimpy he can’t bring himself to shoot a squirrel. His fate, upon joining the Marines, comes out of nowhere and is meant only to tighten the lasso around True.
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‘Broke’ Manages To Name-Check ‘The Big Lebowski’
Soon, events send True into a hole of self-pity, despite Ali’s insistence that he’d make a damn fine artist, which is a bit curious. It’s hard to imagine there’s no place for True anywhere in his beloved world of rodeo, and his best option is to become the next Frederic Remington. But True has both sensitive and artistic streaks in ways that don’t also ring, well, true. Indeed, even if one cannot fault his taste in auteur cinema, when he tells Ali that his horse is named after The Big Lebowski, it hits the ear like an off-key cattle call.
Despite its wobbly moments, Broke is a tasteful, if unsurprising, Western drama with good performances (including a brief turn from Tom Skerritt) and a deep sense of authenticity. Eubank ambles down a freshly laid, if occasionally bumpy, road to tap into contemporary career worries while showing an affinity for the Western environment and sympathy for the people in it. And that’s good enough to keep us engaged for much more than rodeo’s all-important eight seconds.
Broke is a production of Hercules Film Fund, Rhea Films, Slow Burn, and Wild West Picture Show Productions. It will be released on VOD by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment on May 6.
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